How I Prep & Seal for Subfloor Van Build Ep 4 | Sprinter Conversion

This is a familiar sight, isn't it? Good morning. It's a new day. And today we are going to tackle the sub floor and I have my friend Tiffany with me. Tiffany actually bought a built out T1N Sprinter van that she still has today. And you've had that for what? Five, six years? Yeah. So long time. So she's going to actually help me dive into the sub floor today. And we were just going over what exactly that is. So I was telling her about how we did the lights on my last video, which you guys saw. And the hardest part of that was just pushing up. My arms are so sore the next day, but doing the sub floor, these it's also riveted. So as you can see, there's rivets that we're going to have to take out, but because we'll be pushing down with the drill, I think it's going to go really quickly and easy. And I'm hoping that's the hardest part of today. So my goal for the day is to get the sub floor up. If we can go any further than that, awesome. But right now that's the main goal. So I'm going to go ahead and get our drill and our bits and we're going to dive in. How do you feel? I'm so excited. Honestly, this is crazy for me because I have a Sprinter, a T1N the same year, and I've never seen an empty shell like in the bones. So now it helps me cause I actually want to do some work on mine. And so being able to partake in this and learn how to do it from the head haunch herself, like I feel really lucky. I feel really excited and I'm excited to see how fast we can make stuff move and turn this into the van of her dreams. I think that's going to be an amazing experience and journey. I think you guys are really going to enjoy it. Picking up anything that's like trash and I don't want to just leave flow out onto the ground and anything that will pop tires. Dust is fine, but we don't want that stuff out on the ground. That's for sure. Did it break it? Okay. There we go. So I think that my lens is dirty. So I think that we got all of the rivets. There was a couple that I just couldn't get through all the way, but I think we got all of the other ones. So I'm just going to see if I can just use some tools to see if we can just get it up and see what it looks like underneath. Let's take a moment to thank today's sponsor June's journey, a hidden object mystery game with a captivating detective story, taking you back to the glamorous 1920s. We all know that I love a good mystery. So when I take a break from the van build, I like to play something that gets my mind off of the task at hand. And it's something that's simple yet captivating. June's journey is a free to download mobile game in all these really cool different scenes. You find hidden objects and that gets you points. And so that way you can go customize remodel or fix up your mansion or your garden Island. However you'd like. I love playing June's journey on my breaks because it helps me clear my mind, but also challenges me at the same time. Download June's journey for free by clicking the link below in the description or through our QR code on the screen. June's journey is available on Android and iOS mobile devices, as well as on your PC through your Facebook games. Well, it's cause it's still kind of connected. Like the rivets are still connected a little bit. I was getting scared that I wasn't going to be able to get the sub floor up. So I turned the camera off and as soon as I did, I was able to come back here and rip it, rip it up by hand. So now we're just going to get the second piece up and then we'll have a template for the floor. And we'll really get to see what this looks like. Sub floors out. So next thing I want to do is hammer down all these rivets. We'll take the leaf blower, air out all the dust and the dirt, round up any loose screws and then see what it looks like at that point. Dirty rust water got you down. Want to recycle, reuse, renew yourself. Don't you worry about tetanus. Think of the past. We did it. We did it. So I had to go to the hardware store. Let's see what we got. Safety goggles, some spray bottles in case I need them for something, but we'll see. We have some spray paint, rust reformer and wire wheels and some 220 sandpaper. And some double A batteries that are irrelevant to the build. So aside from the van itself, that brings our total so far to, we spent $88.98 but those batteries don't count and those were $10. So say $89, about $79 so far on the van build. So, Oh, I gotta go get my keys, but we're going to sand down some of the rust in the more hardcore rust. We're going to use that wire wheel on and then we'll treat it and paint it. It's a new day. So last night I had to stop because it was getting too cold outside. For me to use the rust reformer because it has to be like within a certain degree. So I think the lowest it could be is like 50 degrees and it's mid to high 40s right now. So I had to, let me show you. I spent all morning breaking down those big shelves that were inside of the van and I put a big heater in the van so that the metal will be warm. It'll be warm in there. So I could throw on that rust performer reformer and get that drying. Also, we got our diesel heater. So I'm going to go ahead and start on the rust reformer and get that drying. That's where I'm at right now. So let's go ahead and get that done. It's definitely nice and warm in here. Okay. So I just finished, I closed up the van and I have the heater blasting in there. So hopefully it'll dry pretty quick, which it seemed like it was and it was pretty warm in there. So once that dries, then I can go over it with the white paint. At least that's the plan. Okay. So where we're at now is the rust reformer is dry. I wasn't sure if it was going to be more like a paint. Or more like a chemical and it's more like a paint. So instead of going over it with the white paint, um, I'm just going to leave it be to move on to the next step. We are going to seal the floor. How we're going to do that is with hush mat, kill mat, same thing, but this is what we have leftover from previous builds. So I'm going to start with the hush mat and we are going to seal the entire floor with the hush mat and then we'll use what's left for the sound barrier on the walls and the ceiling. So this is basically like butyl tape and I've used it to seal the holes in the past and it works great. So instead of going all out and doing way too much that doesn't need to be done, I'm going to keep it simple and just use the hush mat. Now some people are going to tell me I'm wrong and that's okay. There's more than one way to skin a cat. I've done this before and never had an issue. So this is how I'm going to do it. So that being said, we're going to seal the entire floor. So I have the whole van kill matted. My camera battery died before or as I was getting to the wheel wells. So I finished the entire floor. I did the wheel wells as well as the front of the step area here. And so when you do kill mat, you have to like, you have to use a roller like this that's for the kill mat and the kill mat is textured with these bumps as you can see. So you take this and you have to basically work out all of these little bumps. So it's very tedious, but you, you're supposed to do that. It helps like lock it in. So I am going to spend the rest of my day today doing that. So that's probably going to take the rest of my day, which I have an hour. Hopefully it doesn't take longer than that, but that's my goal for the rest of the day. And then we will be ready for sub floor. I've officially finished the, um, flattening the kill mat. I think I touch every single inch of it. The sun's starting to go down. It's the end of the day. And I think I've had a pretty productive day today. So at this point we are officially ready for sub floor. I kept the flooring that was in here so I can use that as a template to cut the plywood. Um, and luckily we had extra kill mat and hush mat lying around. So that saved me big time on money. I will leave a link in the description to all the products I used in this video like the rust reformer and the kill mat, anything like that. So feel free to check out the description if you are wanting to check out any of these products that I used. I am extremely happy with how far we've come. My goal is to get this done by springtime and hopefully we can get it done before then. I am very optimistic about it, but I will say I don't miss doing this. I didn't build for a living like Isaac did, but I helped him a lot in building the buses that he sold. And I can tell you right now, this is not something that I would want to do for a living. Um, but knowing that this is going to be mine and I'm probably going to have this van for a very long time, or at least I intend to. And I really want to take a trip come spring time, whether it's a solo mom trip or me and Ember take a trip or the whole family takes a trip. I'm just really looking forward to getting out there this summer and traveling a bit, especially since we've been kind of busy the last two years. Like last summer we were, this last summer we were moving into the house the summer before that Ember was still really, really young and I was going through a lot personally dealing with postpartum depression and it was a lot. So to finally start to feel like myself again because of the steps that I've taken and building this van out and being able to slow down a little bit in the future and not be constantly working like physical work and getting back into being creative and working that way. I'm just really looking forward to it. So I hope that this video helped you and I am so looking forward to the next video, which will be the sub floor and probably the flooring as well. So we're definitely going places and getting stuff done. So I hope everyone had a happy holidays and a happy new year. Make sure that you guys subscribe if you want to follow along with the build and leave a comment cause it does help and I appreciate all of you and I will see you guys on the next video. Don't forget to download June's journey using the link in the description or the QR code here on the screen. Thanks for watching.